Hazel Carby, one of the world's leading scholars on race, gender, and African American issues, has been appointed as Centennial Professor at LSE’s International Inequalities Institute (III).
Professor Carby will conduct research focusing on the inequalities embedded in climate change and other global environmental challenges. She will also teach on two programmes: the Masters in Inequalities and Social Science and the Atlantic Fellows for Social and Economic Equity.
She has spent most of her distinguished career at Yale University where she is the Charles C. and Dorothea S. Dilley Professor Emeritus of African American Studies and Professor Emeritus of American Studies. Her critically acclaimed book Imperial Intimacies: A Tale of Two Islands won the British Academy's 2020 Nayef Al-Rodhan Prize for Global Cultural Understanding.
She commented: “I am looking forward to working with colleagues at the Institute on a multidisciplinary engagement with the inequalities embedded in the ecological relations of environmental racism and imminent climate catastrophe. Poor black, brown and indigenous peoples are the most vulnerable to the effects of environmental exploitation, dispossession and degradation rooted in settler colonialism and racial capitalism. Today these communities are also at the forefront of mobilising collective, cultural and political resistance to mining, the extraction of fossil fuels, toxic pollution and waste. It is imperative that our research and knowledge systems be propelled from and informed by these sites of struggle and alternative ways of living with and on the earth if we are to have a future.”
Francisco Ferreira, Director of III, said: “Racial inequalities – in so many different dimensions – are among the most odious and egregious in our societies today. I believe Professor Carby is uniquely placed to inspire and energise our work on these topics, and I am absolutely delighted that she will be joining LSE and the Institute in 2022 as a Centennial Professor.”
Armine Ishkanian, Executive Director of the Atlantic Fellows for Social Equity programme at III, added: “I am delighted that Professor Carby will be joining the III as Centennial Professor as her research speaks to the aims and areas of focus of the Atlantic Fellows for Social and Economic Equity (AFSEE) programme and the III/AFSEE Politics of Inequality research theme. I believe her work be of great interest to our community of AFSEE Fellows and I very much look forward to working with her when she joins us in 2022.”
The appointment of Professor Hazel Carby as Centennial Professor at LSE’s International Inequalities Institute was supported by the Institute’s Racial Justice Working Group.